These very cool baskets were made of telephone wire by talented South African Zulu artisans. Such craftsmanship!

Now, I have a story to tell of my own telephone wire artistry!

When I saw these baskets, I immediately had a warm and fuzzy flashback to my childhood days, of times spent with my best buds Shelley and Sue.

Their dad had worked at Bell Telephone and gifted them with the

"treasure" of a spool of multi-colored telephone wire.

Being the crafty kids that we were, we spent hours

cutting, twisting and twirling the wire into kooky, curlicued rings.Tiffany's had nothing on us.I was curious to see what I could find online that resembled our rings.This pic from Pinterest, showing the first stage of the ring, was the only thing I could find. Our next step was totightly curl each of the wires into a cluster and voila!

Just one of the tons of good times we girls had back in the day. Before video games & cell phones, naturally.And yes, one can definitely see the beginnings of my artistic creativity that eventually led to my handcrafted jewelry shop, Paisley Beading! (Shameless plug. Ha!)